Reality Check!!

Every year my girls have the option to choose between a friends birthday party with all that entails but then a modest gift OR they can choose a more expensive gift but fore go any party. This year, for the second time in a row, Mari has ditched the party in favor of the GIFT. After much soul searching, Patrick and I decided to let Mari join the texting generation...reluctantly and with strict ties to grades and behavior! So for the past two weeks this has been all Mari has seen in front of her eyes.... You'd think that those cryptic abbreviated texts were the secret to long life and happiness with the way she has embraced this little gadget! Lucky for me the plan came with a parental controls feature that allows me to block service from 9pm to 6am so she gets some sleep. The thing is that the more I saw her with her eyes glued to this little marvel of technology in her hands the more I saw an image over and over in my head.. while Mari and I enjoy the luxuries of our modern world there is a woman very dear to us who has this for a kitchen! Life is not fair...this we know BUT when the disparity reaches this level I am uncomfortable in my own skin. I have a 12 year old to spoil rotten because of this disparity! Why am I entitled to be the biggest "winner" in this relationship? How will my 12 year old ever learn to appreciate the Golden Rule if we only "do unto ourselves"? We've made periodic pushes to remember how very much better it is to give than to receive but I know it is only just words really at her age. So this year will be a very different Christmas for Mari! This year Santa will be leaving a LOT less under the tree for her because this is the year that the truth behind those words becomes real. This year it is going to be BETTER to GIVE than to receive because this year she will know that she "did unto others"! Thanks to the assistance of Todd with Books and Wings and Oscar Martinez Vasquez in Guatemala we were able to arrange for Santa (Oscar) to bring a gas stove to Mari's birth mother! (Okay, so she had to go pick it up from him, small detail in a big story.) No longer will her father and brother need to scour the countryside for firewood! No longer will her mother need to nurse a flame from wet wood during the rainy season! No longer will the family fill their lungs with the smoke and ash of an open fire! Unlike the cell phone, this stove is the secret to a longer life with more happiness!!!!! So Josefa, les deseo y mi familia muchas bendiciones en sus vidas y que pases una Navidad llena mucho amor y un feliz ano nuevo!!!